In all your years of collecting, have you ever “hit the big one”?

[oakman29]

Never hit the big one yet but alot of little ones

[telerites]

I hit it big in 1986 when I was 13 and just started to collect. Father and I went into a goodwill/used book store. I saw 2 books for sale for .25 each. My dad let me buy one but not the other. I only bought it because I never saw a book with a cover price for .10. I can't recall what the other book was. My luck it was an Action Comics #1.

 

Bought All-Star Comics #3. I went to a store in Sacramento, CA called (out of BIZ now) Comics & Comix to see if I could buy a bag and board for it since my bags didn't fit. They offered me $50 for it on the spot. Told them No. I told my dad about that, we didn't know the real value so he placed an add in the Sacramento Bee to sell it. Guy traded me my 1st car for it, a 1967 Plymouth Barracuda 383. That was my car all the way through high school.

 

My best and only great deal of a lifetime. I know go into any old bookstore looking for a miracle. It never has happened again.

 

Copy of the book - not the real one.

 

 

Wow - a quarter!! It would be fun to know what the other book was.

[Larryw7]

I hit it big in 1986 when I was 13 and just started to collect. Father and I went into a goodwill/used book store. I saw 2 books for sale for .25 each. My dad let me buy one but not the other. I only bought it because I never saw a book with a cover price for .10. I can't recall what the other book was. My luck it was an Action Comics #1.

 

Bought All-Star Comics #3. I went to a store in Sacramento, CA called (out of BIZ now) Comics & Comix to see if I could buy a bag and board for it since my bags didn't fit. They offered me $50 for it on the spot. Told them No. I told my dad about that, we didn't know the real value so he placed an add in the Sacramento Bee to sell it. Guy traded me my 1st car for it, a 1967 Plymouth Barracuda 383. That was my car all the way through high school.

 

My best and only great deal of a lifetime. I now go into any old bookstore looking for a miracle. It never has happened again.

 

Copy of the book - not the real one.

 

 

 

Great story!

[shiverbones]

agreed! Awesome story!

[Comicdey]

I love feeding my collection.....I've bought a ton of Fox, Fiction House, Avon's and TOS over the last 5 years. You can't do that unless you play "ball" or make a ton of money, or both.

 

I've had lots of singles in the collecting of comics, tons of doubles, quite a few triples and maybe two or three home runs.

 

Of course there are many foul balls, outs, and double plays when you sell at a loss just because you've either lost interest, didn't get the grade as described, or the market just changed. I try to avoid those, but it happens all the time. You just avoid getting knocked out of the tournament with a huge loss.

 

Singles are when you find a book at your LCS for a song and then find a buyer that wants it more than you such as a copy of Katy Keene #1 that I bought for $20 and sold for $300 a week later. I even consider buying a slabbed Avengers 1 for $350 and selling it for $425 a single.

 

Doubles are when you're traveling and you go to a LCS, find some reasonably priced books (a few for your collection too) and then turn around and sell some of them and end up getting your books for free and making a decent profit too. Buy low, sell in the medium range so the next buyer doesn't get a nose bleed if they decide to resell. I tend to spend a few thousand, sell some of what I find and end up in the black with some books added to the collection. I have a Nice Flash 42, All Star 6, 11 and others that are in the collection that way recently.

 

Triples are when you find a local small collection for a few hundred dollars when you happen by a garage sale, or if you're so inclined to take the time to search other venues. I've found a few fun collections over the years like that including a steamer trunk that had a full run of Hulk 1-6 and 102-200 with multiple copies of 181, and even Xmen 94-142 with around 10 copies of 137. I sold some of those over the years and even slabbed my 137 at 9.8 and sold it a few years ago. I've only been able to find a smattering of GA, a handful of SA and then the bronze and copper. Another triple that I found was an OO collection of Bronze Age books in 8.5-9.8 condition with many multiples including 10 copies of Marvel Spotlight 5. That collection funded a complete trip to the 1991 San Diego Comic con and paid for all the books I purchased including early HG pre-hero TOS, JLA 1. I haven't hit an in state triple in a long time as I don't peruse locally due to time constraints.

 

A have hit a few Triples with out of state folks included GL 1-30, Hulk 1-6 and a few hundred others. Another was a TOS 39-99 run last year.

 

 

Home Runs are far and few between but I consider those the big wins that feed my need for GGA books and other titles.

 

When I buy a book for a great price and am able to sell it (reasonably) for a profit over $1,000 within a short timeframe. Not counting those books I paid a little for 20/30 years ago. I figure those are just the cost of living increases on steroids. That usually only happens once a year and it's normally for a Marvel Key. They're still out there to be had, and if you have a feel for the market, you can do well.

 

My biggest home run was a collection of around 3,000-4,000 comics that included the following runs along with a bunch of esoteric shorter silver, bronze titles and HG copper books:

AF 15 (CGC 1.8)

ASM 1 up

Cap 101 up

Daredevil 1 up

Defenders 1 up

FF 1 up

Ghost rider 1 up

Hulk 1-6, 102 up (181 turned out to be an 8.5)

JIM 83 up (sold the JIM 83 on the boards for $460 :: ...shoulda kept it)

Marvel spotlight 1 up

Marvel team up 1 up

Sgt. fury 1-10

Silver Surfer 1-18 (17 turned out to be a 9.6 W) (The whole run was amazing)

Xmen 1 up (CGC 3.5 if I recall on the 1)

 

The only big runs I didn't get from that collection was the TOS and TTA...go figure as the TOS is my favorite.

 

I still have 75% of the collection and I've upgraded many in my runs, but some day I'll sell more from it when I have time. Some incredible stuff that needs to be bagged and boarded as many are future CGC 9.6/9.8's. I think I paid around $10,000 for the entire collection over time through a local auction house and I've sold enough to recover that (+).

 

Of course most of the key are gone, but I already had some of those anyway.

 

Xmen 1

JIM 83

Sgt. Fury 1

AF 15

SS 1, 4

DD 1

 

Cheers to the fun of building your collection. It's taken me over 30 years just to get where I'm at in the hobby, and I'm so far from having all the books I'd like in grade. :: there's always something prettier and shinier to covet.

[mister_not_so_nice]

A couple of years ago I contacted an artist that did the art for a 56 page one-shot I liked. I was hoping he might have a page or two still since the book was published about 12 years prior. I already owned one page, so I knew some had left his possession, plus he is repped by one of bigger dealers.

He wrote back and said he still had 46 of the pages ! I was scrambling to get the funds together because the price per page he wanted was GREAT! I was able to get all of the pages, and he was so happy I bought them he did a cover recreation(the original was painted by someone else) of the issue for me for free!

[Gatsby77]

Sounds amazing! What was the issue/artist?

[mister_not_so_nice]

Sounds amazing! What was the issue/artist?

 

ONE MAN'S WAR by Peter Snejbjerg